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Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reportedly reports that Julia Gillard’s winning margin over Kevin Rudd in this morning’s Labor leadership vote has been 73-29, coming in at the higher end of market expectations.

UPDATE: The official announcement has actually been that the margin was 71-31. Headline amended. Apologies that comments are currently off, which has been necessary to manage Crikey’s notoriously shaky bandwidth.

UPDATE 2: Ongoing apologies for the offness of the comments. Essential Research has come in at 56-44, up from 55-45 last week and 54-46 the week before. Labor’s primary vote is down a point to 32 per cent and the Coalition’s is up one to 49 per cent, with the Greens steady on 11 per cent. Further questions have 39 per cent blaming Julia Gillard for Labor’s problems against 18 per cent for Kevin Rudd, 23 per cent for others in the party and 10 per cent for the media. Reactions to the Gonski report are typically social democratic, with 61 per cent preferring more education funding to a return to a budget surplus and 68 per cent supporting the report’s recommendations as described against 13 per cent opposed.

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4,059 thoughts on “Gillard 71, Rudd 31”

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Latham points to previous two-strike challengers (Fraser, Keating, Beazely) and notes the symmetry in that they all increased their margins by around a dozen 2nd time around. Rudd would need to pick up 23 in a 2nd challenge, which Latham says is in la-la land.

William – the latest Neilsen state by state breakdown shows marked improvement in Labor vote only in Qld and NSW (compared to the last on Feb 5) which indicates the respondants were dreaming of Rudd return. Interestingly there was a sharp swing to coalition in Vic as respondants apparently thought Julia would lose! Chances are the Newspoll quarterly will show the same.

Essential poll seems more realistic and considered. Why would this be? Because it is on online poll?

Abbott gave a better rant in his SSO speech than he did to the media prior to QT. But it’s all been swamped in the mayhem that followed.

The best they could do is try on a rehash of all the comment made during the week. Which we heard, though it looked like Bishop was just getting into her stride there when Slipper slapped her down. That done, Gillard gave a good forward-oriented response, and then Albanese attempted to go ballistic.

I’m not sure we learnt very much, least of all what the Coalition are actually offering the voting public. We may never know that. They want the carnival to go on much more desperately than Rudd ever would.

Is Crikey now operating within optimum parameters? The steam engine must have blown a piston …

It was mentioned prior to the blackout that Mark Latham provided more keen insight into the ALP party room (despite his absence from there for years) than all of the other gibbering media heads combined.

Kevin Rudd is finished as a serious contender for the top job on the caucus numbers revealed this morning, at least in this current Parliament, but the usual suspects (Hartcher, Speers, Sheridan, et al) are already talking up another challenge, even as they are all still standing around in the corridors tweeting away like parrots, or sitting on their pontificating arses in a warm studio thousands of kilometres from Canberra. No amount of evidence to the contrary is going to sway these anti-Gillardites from their perpetual and incessant tirades against the viability of the PM continuing in office, let alone being competitive at the next election due in 2013.

What has escaped some of these alleged political experts in the media, and was manifestly apparent to Mark Latham despite his jaundiced view of ALP politics, is that Rudd and Gillard are mere work colleagues, not friends or lovers, and don’t need to have a close working relationship to co-exist as effective MPS in this Parliament. Almost everyone can point to people they work with who they do not necessarily like, but one gets on with the work that one is paid to do towards the common end. Why is this so difficult for most journos to believe, even despite Rudd’s known political ambition? Even the most obtuse politician can eventually see the writing on the wall, if it is written in big enough letters.

The task now for the ALP and for Julia Gillard is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, to bind up the nation’s (and the party’s) wounds, and with charity for all and malice towards none, to move beyond the recent rancour and concentrate on the real danger to our nation’s future – the dire potential for the egregious Tony Abbott to be our nation’s next PM.

On the money again!]
I was after the cutlets but was told that only sausages were left on Twitter, I had to make a big decision were they long thin ones or short fat ones, a lot of difference the reply was not for this genteel site, last thing I heard was I had the “chuck” steak, no more hours of laborious figuring out numbers for me , not worth it! Chuck steak